Max Keiser

Timothy Maxwell "Max" Keiser (born January 23, 1960) is an American broadcaster and film maker. He hosts Keiser Report, a financial program broadcast on Russian state media channel RT. Until November 2012, Keiser anchored On the Edge, a program of news and analysis hosted by Iran's Press TV.

Articles by Max Keiser

It’s easy to go down the wormhole of complexity when it comes to figuring out why our economy is stagnating for the bottom 80% of households. But it’s actually not that complicated: the primary driver of stagnation, decline of small business start-ups, etc. is costs are skyrocketing to the point of unaffordability.
As I have pointed out many times, history is unambiguous regarding the economic foundations of widespread prosperity: the core ingredients are:
1. Low inflation, a.k.a. stable, sound money
2. Social mobility (a meritocracy that enables achievers and entrepreneurs to climb out of impoverished beginnings)
3. Relatively free trade in products, currencies, ideas and innovations
4. A state (government) that

In November of 2015 when silver was bottoming, we all had to endure 15 consecutive days of pure disgust:

2016 was not quite as bad, but not any easier:

Which brings us to November 2017:

Notice the theme here.
Silver bottomed in 2015. In 2016, silver began (or resumed) its bull market. This is further supported by the huge moves on the 2016 chart above. This is because, generally speaking, in bull markets, the biggest moves are to the downside, and in bear markets, the biggest moves are to the upside.
And what do we see in 2017? A very slow and painful grind to the upside full of emotional hope and hopelessness all wrapped into eleven months.
So far, we have been spared the massive drop in price this November. This

In this episode of the Keiser Report Max and Stacy discuss the bizarre documents leaked to TheIntercept.com exposing an alleged financial plan to attack Qatar with weapons of mass financial destruction. In the second half Max continues his interview with Max Blumenthal about #russiagate, #TheResistance, AIPAC and more.
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40 years ago, a grand experiment was embarked upon. One that promised US workers: Using new ‘defined contribution’ retirement savings vehicles such as IRAs and 401k,, they’d be better off when they reached retirement age.
Which raises a simple but very important question: How have things worked out?

The answer? Not well at all for the vast majority of Americans, for whom “retirement” will remain a perpetual myth.

We have been saying for weeks now, and probably sound like a broken record, that sooner or later the open interest has to come down. There are two ways it can come down, by a brute force paper dump and then the bullion banking cartel, also known as the commercials, step in and buy back all those contracts they sold short.
The other way is just to buy them back, which would drive the price up in a “short covering” event. We’ll have to see what happened to the level of open interest to start to see if the banks are covering their shorts.
The cartel has tried to smash all week, starting on Sunday night at 10:30 p.m. EST, but each time the dip has been bought:

We’ve all heard that the problem with the web is fake news, i.e. unsubstantiated or erroneous content that’s designed to mislead or sow confusion.
The problem isn’t just fake news–it’s the homogenization of the web, that is, the elimination or marginalization of independent voices of skepticism and dissent.
There are four drivers of this homogenization:
1. The suppression of dissent under the guise of ridding the web of propaganda and fake news–in other words, dissent is labeled fake news as a cover for silencing critics and skeptics.
2. The sharp decline of advertising revenues flowing to web publishers, both major outlets and small independent publishers like Of Two Minds.
3. The majority of advert revenues now flow

In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max and Stacy discuss ‘the international oligarchy’ exposed by the ‘Paradise Papers.’ In the second half, Max interviews Max Blumenthal about the business of #Russiagate.
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– Is the New Fed Chief Jeremy Powell a “Swamp Critter Extraordinaire”?
– Trump surrounding himself with elites disconnected from everyday society
– Realities of America’s difficulties not recognised by US power makers
– Powell will likely continue to protect Wall Street over Main Street
– Savers should diversify to protect themselves from Fed’s ponzi policies

Just like many of his other campaign promises, Trump isn’t doing a great job of draining the swamp. His nominee for Fed Chair is Jerome Powell.
Powell is a ‘swamp critter extraordinaire’ so declared by Bill Bonner last week. We’re inclined to agree. Name-calling is poor sportsmanship when it comes to politics, but hey, Trump started it.
When Trump traveled around

Bitcoin, the original electronic peer-to-peer digital currency system, was created in 2009. Along with it came blockchain technology, which fintech firms have since started using for purposes outside of simply mining more currency, or rivaling bank payment systems. While bitcoin remains by far the best known and most valuable cryptocurrency, some have started to express doubts about its future. Even as its price-per-coin soars, many see signs that point to bitcoin losing its popularity. One of the biggest catalysts of this notion is the number of new and more widely applicable uses that innovators have found for both blockchain and new alternative coins.
Bitcoin is in Retrograde
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency with a

It’s been widely noted that the U.S. film industry ably functions as a pro-global hegemony propaganda machine: even when the plot features evil rogue elements at work in a global-hegemony agency (Pentagon, CIA, NSA, etc.), the competence of the agency is never in doubt, nor is the agency’s ability to rid itself of the evil rogue element.
Evil conspiracies are revealed and the Good Guys/Gals win.
This depiction of official competence and the moral righteousness of patriotic employees is not surprising; these agencies have long “cooperated” with Hollywood on many levels.

More troubling is the recent film-industry depiction of our dependence on superheroes and their superpowers to set things right. The benign view is

A military coup-de-grace in Zimbabwe and a bankrupt Venezuela. Both countries have extreme hyperinflation, citizens are starving and basic medical treatment is near impossible to find. These are the real world problems 47.5 million people are currently facing.
Presidents Robert Mugabe and Nicolas Maduro both deny the crises in their respective countries. For Maduro it is the media propagating false

One of the enduring mysteries in conventional economics (along with why wages for the bottom 95% have stagnated) is the recent decline in productivity gains (see chart). Since gains in productivity are the ultimate source of higher wages, these issues are related. Simply put, advances in productivity are core to widespread prosperity.

But that’s only half the problem–productivity gains have flowed to the top of the income-wealth pyramid as financialization and cartels have replaced real-world wealth creation as the source of wealth-income.

Longtime correspondent Zeus Y. recently identified one cause of declining productivity and the narrowing of financial gains in the top: the quasi-cartels that dominate our

The long heralded UK debt crisis is here and data released in the U.K. this week clearly shows this.
This is seen in UK retail sales and consumer spending which plunged in October, employment falling, pay stagnant and inflation ticking higher as sterling remains under pressure.

While there are numerous dynamics at work in the turmoil roiling Saudi Arabia and by extension, the Mideast, one way to cut to the chase is to follow the oil, follow the money. Correspondent B.D. recently posited a factor that has been largely overlooked in the geopolitical / fate-of-the-petrodollar discussions:
Perhaps the core dynamic is a technical one of diminished oil production. Here is B.D.’s commentary:
“I think the Saudis may be quickly running out of profitable oil to produce/export.
I think they tried to over-produce for a while to damage the competition… and they now have production issues resulting from that. (As has happened in the past)
I think they may have recently slipped over the event horizon for

– Protect Your Savings With Gold: ECB Propose End To Deposit Protection
– New ECB paper proposes ‘covered deposits’ should be replaced to allow for more flexibility
– Fear covered deposits may lead to a run on the banks
– Savers should be reminded that a bank’s word is never its bond and to reduce counterparty exposure
– Physical gold enable savers to stay out of banking system and reduce exposure to bail-ins

It is the ‘opinion of the European Central Bank’ that the deposit protection scheme is no longer necessary:
‘covered deposits and claims under investor compensation schemes should be replaced by limited discretionary exemptions to be granted by the competent authority in order to retain a degree of flexibility.’

As has been widely noted, the Republicans’ proposed “tax reform” is not only just more BAU (business as usual, i.e. cut taxes for the wealthy), it’s also not real reform. At best, it’s just another iteration of D.C. policy tweaks packaged for PR purposes as “reform.”
You want real tax reform? This is what real tax reform would look like:
1. Shred the entire 2,700 page tax code and replace it with a 25-page code. As I explained in The Fetid Swamp of Tax Reform (November 10, 2017), the 2,700 page current tax code is a complexity thicket designed to hide tax breaks and subsidies for big political donors.
Politicos give lip service to simplifying the tax code for PR purposes, but no politico actually wants radical

Both gold and silver ended last week with bad omens. Let’s look at those omens as it pertains to the problem the cartel has had for months: Open Interest In silver, open interest needs to come down:

If it comes down this week, the cartel will have painted the chart rather bearishly in the short-term. If we drop below $16.59, then we will have put in another lower-low on the charts, and if open interest is going to come down, it looks like silver very well might get below that price level.
Gold looks relatively smoother on the chart, but the open interest is still too high:

The key level to hold on to is $1263. A drop below that price will again have painted the chart very bearishly. One has to wonder, how much lower

Chris Martenson unpacks the implications of the rapidly-changing developments in Saudi Arabia.
There is growing threat to the petrodollar’s dominance, as well as developments underway that may well send oil spiking in price soon — both of which will have huge impact on the price of world assets ranging from stocks, to real estate, to gold.
Click here to read the full article

To understand the U.S. tax code and the endless charade of tax reform, we have to start with four distasteful realities:
1. Ours is not a representational democracy, it’s a political auction in which wealth casts the votes that count. Those seeking political influence over issues such as taxation place their bids in the political auction via campaign contributions and lobbying. The winner of the political auction gets favorable treatment, and everyone else ends up subsidizing the gains of the winner.
2. The wealthy pay the vast majority of federal income taxes (as opposed to payroll taxes, i.e. Social Security and Medicare), so tax cuts end up benefiting the wealthy.

Correspondent Mark G. and I have long discussed the potential relevancy of old boundaries, alliances and structures in Europe’s future alignments.Examples include the Holy Roman Empire and the Hanseatic League, among others.
In the long view, Europe has cycled between periods of consolidation and fragmentation for two millennia, starting with the Roman Empire and its dissolution. Various mass movements of tribes/peoples led to new political structures and alliances, and a dizzying range of leaders rose to power and schemed their way through an equally dizzying array of wars, alliances and betrayals.
Regardless of the era or players, security is a permanent priority: this includes defensible borders, alliances to

In this episode of the Keiser Report Max and Stacy ask whether or not Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who is currently under Ritz arrest, would have been better off had he owned bitcoin instead of Twitter and Fox. In the second half Max continues his interview with Dr. Michael Hudson, author of Super Imperialism. They recount the history of labor, socialism, Minneapolis and more.
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– Diversify, rebalance investments and prepare for interest rate rises
– UK launches inquiry into household finances as £200bn debt pile looms
– Centuries of data forewarn of rapid reversal from ultra low interest rates
– 700-year average real interest rate is 4.78% (must see chart)
– Massive global debt bubble – over $217 trillion (see table)
– Global debt levels are building up to a gigantic tidal wave
– Move to safe haven higher ground from coming tidal wave
Editor: Mark O’Byrne
Source: Bloomberg
Last week, the Bank of England opted to increase interest rates for the first time in a decade. Since then alerts have been coming thick and fast for Britons warning them to prepare for some tough financial times ahead.
The

The recent explosion of ICOs has been pretty magnificent to behold. In 2017 alone ICOs managed to raise over $1.3 billion in funds, significantly more than any previous year.
ICOs come in all shapes and sizes, and it can be tough to decide which ones are worthy of investment, and which are doomed to fail.
One promising ICO is Gladius, which aims to first change the way DDoS attacks are dealt with using blockchain technology and some ingenious ideas. And secondly, to improve the current content delivery industry (CDN) to make a more distributed, faster and cheaper alternative to modern CDNs.
To see why Gladius is so exciting, it’s important to take a quick look at just how damaging DDoS attacks are, and why it’s so

The fundamental news is nothing short of complete and total uncertainty. A month after the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, we had the worst mass shooting in a church in U.S. history. On top of the worsening domestic situation, Saudi Arabia is in utter chaos right now with dead princes, frozen bank accounts, war and war threats, and a petro-dollar that behind closed doors most certainly undergoing spats of violent convulsions.
So coming into Monday it seems there would be a lot of fear and uncertainty in the markets. And under normal circumstances it would, and it most likely does have a lot of fear and uncertainty in the markets right now.
Yet the “fear index”, the VIX, stayed under 10 all day long:

Stripped of pretense, ours is a culture of rape. Apologists for the system that spawned this culture of rape claim that this violence is the work of a few scattered sociopaths. The apologists are wrong: The system generates a culture of rape.
The engine of our culture of rape is the elevation of the entitled-insider classto untouchability: they are above the law, and more equal than others in their freedom to impose every sick sociopathology known to humanity on the powerless peasants imprisoned in our noxious neofeudal system.
For the true sickness of our society and culture is measured not in the vile crimes of our entitled-insider class: it’s measured by the armies of enablers, protectors,

Platinum Bullion ‘May Be One Of The Only Cheap Assets Out There’
Platinum “may be one of the cheap assets out there” and “is cheap when compared with stocks or bonds” according to Dominic Frisby writing in the UK’s best selling financial publication Money Week.
Platinum Bullion in USD (15 years)
Frisby writing in Money Week laments the total absence of value in today’s markets. He then identifies an asset that is both cheap (on a relative basis) and is valuable and the article is well worth a read:
The value investor’s lament – where have all the cheap assets gone?
Every week in MoneyWeek magazine there’s a small column devoted to great investors from the past. You read a bit about who they were, what their